Cooking is, and has long been, the leading cause of home structure fires and civilian home fire injuries. This is true for both fires reported to fire departments and those handled without fire department assistance. During 2006-2012, U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 150,200 home structure fires involving cooking equipment per year. These fires caused an annual average of 500 civilian deaths, 4,660 civilian injuries, and $756 million in direct property damage. See, e.g., NFPA 2013. Ranges, with or without ovens, account for the majority (59%) of total reported home structure fires involving cooking equipment and even larger shares of associated civilian deaths.
Conventional smoke and fire detectors typically detect the presence of certain particles generated by smoke and fire by ionization or photometry. Weaknesses of smoke detectors include that they are distance limited, susceptible to false alarms, lose sensitivity over time, may require annual battery replacements, and fail in open or large spaces. Currently, there are no products on the market that use a smoke or fire detector to control a stove top range burner element.